The IBM Personal System/2 Model 70 386, machine number 8570-A21, is a known, commercially available personal computer that uses a 32 bit, 80386 microprocessor commercially available for Intel Corporation. Such computer provides relatively high performance due at least in part to a design in which data is transferred over a bus in pipelined fashion. As is well known, the operation of a computer is cyclic in that a clock divides the operation into clock or machine cycles which time the various operations so that they can occur in proper sequence. In order to transfer data between memory and a microprocessor, for example, the address in memory of where the data will be written into or read from, is first placed on the bus during one cycle, followed shortly thereafter in the next cycle by the data being placed on the bus. When successive units of data are to be transferred, a non-pipelined transfer mode can be used in which successive addresses and data units are transferred on successive cycles without there being any overlap. In a pipelined mode of operation, the address of a subsequent data unit is placed on the bus while the preceding data unit is being transferred so that data units are transferred on successive machine cycles, instead of on every other cycle. Recently, a newer 32 bit microprocessor has become commercially available from Intel Corporation, it being known as the 80486 microprocessor. This microprocessor includes a central processing unit (CPU), a cache unit, a floating point unit, and a memory management unit formed on the same chip. In contrast, the latter three units were provided as separate chips in the personal computer described in the preceding paragraph.
The 80486 microprocessor is operable in a burst mode and a non-burst mode. In non-burst mode, data is strobed onto the bus between the microprocessor and a memory controller at a maximum rate of one data unit every two clock periods or cycles. Such data units comprise 32 bits (4 bytes) of information. During a burst cycle, sixteen bytes are fetched from system memory in one continuous stream or packet of information. This requires that four double words (32 bits-4 bytes) be strobed onto the bus in as few as four successive clock cycles. The burst cycle thus provides four 32 bit accesses using a single address strobe (ADS) at the beginning of the cycle, and the cycle generates a predictable sequence of four memory accesses. There are two primary advantages to the burst cycle. First, it allows the system memory interface to see a single address strobe for a packet of 16 bytes that follow a predictable sequence, thus possibly eliminating the time required to strobe each of the four double words into the memory as separate cycles. Second, the burst cycle provides a convenient means for the microprocessor to fill the on-chip cache. Such cache has a line size of 16 bytes and the burst cycle can fill the cache one line at a time by providing the required 16 bytes.
Given the objective of converting a personal computer using a 80386 microprocessor into a higher performance system using the 80486 microprocessor, a problem arises because the 80486 does not support pipelining and the existing memory interface will not operate efficiently, thereby limiting system performance. The invention solves one aspect of how this new microprocessor can be substituted for the old microprocessor in the above-mentioned personal computer and achieve a high performance operation without having to make extensive hardware changes.